[BELL RINGING]
In last week's episode, we talked about aesthetic.
Let's see what you had to say.
So before we get started, there is some construction
that's happening on the floor above us.
And it shows no sign of slowing.
So I apologize if there's any weird banging sounds.
I promise we're safe.
It's just kind of loud here right now.
Sorry if it's distracting.
So it would seem that we need to confront
the specter of both irony and vaporwave, both of which,
for a very good reason, loom rather large over last week's
aesthetic episode.
So towards that end, I'm gonna just-- I'm
gonna talk for a little bit.
We're going to show some related comments below,
but with one exception-- I'm not going
to respond to individual comments specifically, but more
like lots of comments generally.
And then at the end, I think we're
going to talk a little bit about Idea Channel,
because I think this could end up being a fruitful discussion.
For many people, last week's episode
had a gross oversight, though it was underscored by
and visually referenced the musical genre vaporwave.
There was no direct mention of vaporwave,
which yes, I know and love.
Love me some vaporwave.
If you're unfamiliar, it's these kind of like downtempo, slowed
down EDM slash electro-inspired tunes that-- I mean,
I guess if-- I mean, if you want a starter course,
you can just click on the links in the description
of last week's video.
There are a lot of good tracks in there.
Vaporwave didn't start on 4chan, but it is strongly
associated with 4chan's MU board-- M-U, the music board.
And like a lot of other cultural artifacts which
can be traced back to 4chan, the sense of irony
is very strong in the vaporwave community, which
is not to say that vaporwave itself is devoid of earnestness
or that people who enjoy it don't do so honestly,
but that a lot of the conversation
that surrounds vaporwave and a lot of the supporting material,
especially visuals, make heavy ironic use of their source
material.
There's a lot of irony.
And the strange, but ultimately weirdly appropriate
mix of things that come together to form
the vaporwave aesthetic, both the music
and the visual material, has been
labeled as exactly that-- as aesthetic,
as though kind of like vaporwave has a corner
on the aesthetic market.
So frequently, the usage of the word "aesthetic" online
is directly related to the vaporwave genre,
with aesthetic comments serving as nothing more-- which we're
going to talk about more in a second--
than an announcement of the fact that the thing being commented
on can be viewed as part of the larger vaporwave genre, which
FrankJavCee describes as kind of like living
in a junkyard in a dystopian future
and you find a bunch of VHS tapes
and you're the only person in the world
and everything is lonely, but you have a bunch of weed
and you're high all the time and you're in Japan
and you're in the sky.
So basically, just watch FrankJavCee's
"How to Make Vaporwave" video, and I
think that you'll immediately get
a sense for the kind of irony we're talking about here, which
is to say that aesthetic comments,
they might be used to indicate, like, oh, hey, this thing is
vaporwave, or vaporwave-ish.
But they can also be used to lampoon
or predict or preempt people who may write aesthetic
on such things or any other digital artifact,
for that matter, and mean it earnestly.
Importantly, though, for some people,
the ironic sense of aesthetic is the most commonly deployed
sense.
And when they say things like, I've never
seen someone use this word earnestly,
it only ever works in relationship to vaporwave.
And therefore you've missed something.
I mean, you know, I can't argue.
I can't tell you what you have and have not seen.
But here, I think, is where we can
have what could be an instructive
conversation about Idea Channel in general,
especially as it relates to this idea of missing things.
Because when I am writing episodes,
what I'm hoping that I'm doing is putting together
a framework where you can apply that framework to the things
that you have seen and the things
that you interact with online.
And ultimately, the hope is that the acts of interpretation
that we do here on Idea Channel can be fruitfully applied
to your experiences.
And then you can view these things
that you see every day, hopefully,
in new and interesting ways, if I
can be so bold as to suggest that as a possibility.
And I think a large response to last week's video
seems not to be, I have applied this framework that you put
together to my experience and here's
what I got, with one possible answer being zilch,
but, rather, my experience isn't represented in this framework,
and therefore the framework itself is incomplete or wrong,
which, I mean, sure.
I think this is an effect of the fact
that we are in a peculiar relationship via Idea Channel.
Because I'm not super interested in telling you
how to use the perspective in theory that we cover
in the main episodes with, I guess,
the exception of this very video that you're watching right now.
That's your call what you do with the information
that we cover on Idea Channel episodes.
But I think it suffices to say that it's not
like a science channel.
Like, I'm not here to provide proof
for why things are the way that they are.
I'm here because I'm interested in theorizing about how and why
certain things may be the case.
And we do things like this, the comment responses,
so that we can share between me and you, but also between you
all in the fruits of subjective experience.
And there seems to have been a disconnect
on the aesthetic episode which prevented that from happening.
And it leads me to wonder what the source of that disconnect
is.
And you know, in the past, we've talked about Rugnetta's Law,
where no matter how much we try to sort of cram into
and reference in a particular episode,
there's always going to be a person or group of people
who are really disappointed that we didn't mention x thing.
So perhaps, it's that Rugnetta's Law
has something of a corollary that as the size of that group
grows alongside the perceived obviousness of the oversight,
it becomes increasingly more difficult to interact
with a video on its own terms.
So then it's up to us making the show
to sort of judge the possible egregiousness of that
that we're choosing to leave out and figure out
how to best acknowledge it, even in passing, so
that its absence isn't, like, jarring
or distracting from the larger point of what we're getting at.
So for what it's worth-- and I realize it's possibly not
worth a lot-- my hope was that the subtle nods
to vaporwave in the episode would encourage
those familiar with it to not-- to apply the theory
that we presented in last week's video
without being sort of, like, explicitly told to do so
or how to do so.
But you know, it stands to reason
that the nods that we made towards vaporwave
were too subtle and made it seem not like encouragement,
but like an absence or an oversight.
Fenixius on the subreddit was one
of a few people who made that connection
and wrote what I think is a really nice and appropriate
read on the earnest value judgement, which was what we
sort of described in the episode, that can arise
from the possibly only ever ironic sense of the word
"aesthetic."
And they write-- and I'm just going to read this directly--
"What's more interesting than dank internet vs. geek internet
is the way this appears to be able to influence what is
actually considered aesthetic.
The poop side takes the sarcastic meaning
and finds a more sincere appreciation for the distorted
content originally intended as parody,
and the fandom side can use the originally satirical barb
to form new headcanons or otherwise
explore in a new direction their object of affection."
I also disagree that aesthetic was originally
a satirical barb, as Fenixius puts it.
Its use as an earnest mark of appreciation
predates its associations with vaporwave and irony
by a long shot.
Though, it may not overshadow them,
at least not in certain corners of the internet,
I think YouTube chief amongst them.
But altogether, I do think that Fenixius's point is
worthy of consideration, because at its heart
is this really interesting claim that though irony
may feel like a shield, it doesn't totally, like,
isolate you.
Ironically labeling something as aesthetic,
it doesn't preclude admission of some affect
on the part of the commenter.
And it still signals to people that the subject somehow is
aesthetic, whatever that means.
And those collected actions have a meaning insofar
as they develop a value and a cache
for everything that has already been labeled aesthetic
and everything that's out there that is potentially
label-able as aesthetic, even if it's done ironically, right?
Because irony doesn't really isolate one
from creating meaning or engaging in value judgments,
as we described in the episode.
Fenixius's point may also lead to,
I think, another really interesting and important line
of questioning that arrives at a much, much larger, more complex
topic, which maybe is just worth its own video.
And that's why a lot of us may assume lacking evidence
to the contrary, that people online are having
ironic experiences, as opposed to earnest ones,
which I think we do a lot of the time.
And I think, weirdly, it's hard in a lot of situations
and for a lot of people to assume earnestness
on the part of people writing comments or having experiences
online.
It's a reflex that a lot of us have.
But like I said, I think it's also a topic for another time.
So link to Fenixius's comments in the doobly doo
if you want to read the whole thing.
And I also know that I said last week
we would talk about the whole science versus philosophy thing
this week.
But I have now yammered way too long about irony and vaporwave
and aesthetics, so we'll save that for next week.
See you then.
Thanks for being awesome.
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